- Where
- Beaufort Sea, about 5 km off the Yukon coast
Herschel Island–Qikiqtaruk Territorial Park - Coordinates
- 69.5897° N
139.0992° W - Area
- 116 km², about 15 by 8 km
(Wikipedia) - People
- No year-round residents since 1987
used by the Inuvialuit each summer - Protected
- Territorial park since 1987
UNESCO Tentative List since 2004 - Getting there
- Chartered plane or boat
from Inuvik, about 250 km - Best visited
- Mid-June to mid-September
The little plane put down on a strip edged with driftwood, and the island was green and treeless. Tiny flowers crowded the turf. Grey wooden buildings stood on a gravel spit, black seabirds nesting in one of them. Along the far shore a whole slope had slid down into the sea, mud and blue-grey ice showing in the wound. I found I had started whispering.
The short answer
Herschel Island is an island in the Beaufort Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean, about five kilometres off the north coast of the Yukon; Wikipedia calls it the territory’s only large offshore island. It covers 116 square kilometres, about 15 by 8 kilometres between shorelines, of rolling tundra that rises to 182 metres. The whole island is Herschel Island–Qikiqtaruk Territorial Park, the Yukon’s first territorial park, created in 1987 under the Inuvialuit Final Agreement and run by the Government of Yukon and the Inuvialuit together. Its last year-round residents, the MacKenzie family, left in 1987; the Inuvialuit still use the island for hunting, fishing and camping. Its Inuvialuktun name is Qikiqtaruk, which Wikipedia’s article on the island glosses as “island” and the Government of Yukon, in indexed text, as “our island”.
Why it's worth knowing
A whaling town in the Arctic. Commercial bowhead whaling in the Beaufort Sea began in 1889, Wikipedia records, and to make the short season pay the ships had to winter in the Arctic; Herschel Island had a harbour deep enough for them, and a settlement grew at Pauline Cove from 1890. How large it grew depends on the source. Wikipedia estimates about 1,500 people at the height of the whaling in 1893–94, which made it the largest community in the Yukon at the time, though most lived aboard the ships; Parks Canada’s commemoration, in indexed text, gives 2,000 whalers and Inuit in the winter of 1894–95. The Pacific Steam Whaling Company’s Community House of 1893 still stands and now serves as the park office and visitor centre; Wikipedia calls it believed to be the oldest frame building in the Yukon. Canada designated the island a National Historic Event in 1972, for the whaling, the establishment of Canadian sovereignty in the western Arctic, and the meeting of cultures, according to Parks Canada’s listing.
An island with no rock in it. Wikipedia explains that the island was pushed up, about 30,000 years ago, from sediments shoved along the coastal plain by a lobe of the Laurentide ice sheet, and has no bedrock core. Its permafrost is rich in ice, so the coast erodes fast: up to three metres a year in places, by a 2008 study by Hugues Lantuit and Wayne Pollard in Geomorphology, which also found the large thaw slumps on the south-eastern shore growing in number and size over fifty years. Isla Myers-Smith of the University of British Columbia told CBC News that some slumps now cut into the land by up to 20 metres a year. In the summer of 2024, the Guardian reported, the island’s tundra sheared away in more than 700 places over a fortnight. Three of the historic buildings at Pauline Cove have been moved inland, away from the water.
The field notes
The people before the whalers
The oldest traces of people found on the island are of the Thule, about a thousand years ago, ancestors of today’s Inuvialuit, Wikipedia records. When John Franklin sighted and named the island on 15 July 1826, there were three Inuvialuit settlements on it, and estimates of the population of the island and the Yukon’s north coast at the time range from 200 to 2,000. Franklin wrote that he wished to honour the name Herschel, and the geographer Christopher Burn, examining the record in the journal Arctic in 2009, found it unclear whether he meant William Herschel, his sister Caroline, or his son John, all three of them astronomers.
Law at the edge of the map
The North-West Mounted Police set up a detachment on the island in 1903–04, at first in two small sod huts, and from 1910 to 1931 it was their headquarters for the western Arctic, Wikipedia records; the post closed for good in 1964. It was here, as the only place on that coast with substantial buildings, that two Inuit men, Alikomiak and Tatamigana, were tried after killings in the central Arctic in 1922, among them a police corporal and a Hudson’s Bay Company trader. Both were hanged. The historians K. S. Coates and W. R. Morrison, writing in Arctic, describe the trials as brief and apparently decided in advance, staged to show Canadian law to the Inuit and Canada’s claim to the Arctic to the world. Graves of whalers, of Inuvialuit and of police lie near the settlement at Pauline Cove, in cemeteries the Government of Yukon’s guide to the island’s historic resources records separately.
Guillemots in the mission house
At least 94 bird species have been counted on the island and 40 breed there, Wikipedia records, among them the largest colony of black guillemots in the western Arctic, which nests in the old Anglican mission house built in 1916. Bowhead whales still pass the island on their way west in September; ringed seals hunt along the ice edge, and polar bears follow them, a few females denning on the north slopes in winter. The Government of Yukon calls the island the only place in the territory where polar bears are found. Caribou cross over in summer. From late June to early August the tundra flowers: vetches, louseworts, Arctic lupines, arnicas and forget-me-nots. The island is locked in sea ice from November to early June.
Buried ice exposed in the eroding coastal bluff.
Photograph: Boris Radosavljevic · Permafrost in Herschel Island 015 · CC BY 2.0 · cropped
Pauline Cove from the sea, with slumping hillsides above the settlement.
Photograph: Carina Gsottbauer · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
The Northern Whaling & Trading Co. store at the water's edge, Pauline Cove.
Photograph: Carina Gsottbauer · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
Herschel Island from orbit, 2 September 2024 (Copernicus Sentinel-2).
Satellite image: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2024 · Copernicus data licence · cropped
- Bring a book for each end of the journey. The fog decides when the little planes go, and it pleases itself.
- Begin a page for the flowers by the old buildings. The page filled long before the flowers thinned, and the appendix now has an appendix.
- The low wooden markers near the shore are graves. Walk wide of them, slowly, and leave the camera in its bag.
- Stay well back from any edge where the ground has slipped. It has not finished moving, and it gives no warning.
- Ask the rangers what the island means to those who return each summer, and let the answer take its time.
The store that stepped back. The Northern Whaling and Trading Company store at Pauline Cove, built in 1926 with a warehouse and a small shed by the company of the trader Christian Theodore Pedersen. Wikipedia records that the buildings still stand but have been moved as much as ten metres inland, away from the receding shore; the University of Calgary’s preservation project, in indexed text, describes two moves of about five metres each, the second in 2004. It is seen from outside, where it now stands.
Tally, in the marginI admired the little store for a good while as the one building here that had stayed put. Only while waiting for the plane did it dawn on me that it had already stepped back from the water, and had been far too polite to mention it.
Getting there
How to get there. Through Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories. Canadian North flies to Inuvik from Yellowknife, with connections to Edmonton, and Air North from Whitehorse, Dawson City and Old Crow, by Wikipedia’s airport listing; the Dempster Highway reaches the town by road, with river ferries in summer. From Inuvik the island is about 250 kilometres away, and the Government of Yukon’s indexed park pages say it is reached by chartered aircraft or boat between mid-June and mid-September; an aircraft needs a park permit to land. Travel writers describe a flight of about 90 minutes in a Twin Otter to a short strip lined with driftwood. Expedition cruise ships anchor offshore and land passengers by small boat.
When to go. Mid-June to mid-September, when the park is open to visitors and rangers are on the island. The tundra flowers from late June to early August, by Wikipedia’s account, and bowhead whales pass in September. The Government of Yukon warns that the island is often in fog, particularly in late summer, which can delay flights for hours or days.
What to arrange ahead. The charter, or a place on a shared trip from Inuvik; shared trips need enough passengers to fly, so allow spare days at both ends. Camping needs registration with the park; the Government of Yukon lists driftwood windbreaks, fire rings and outhouses, and a small supply of fresh water that must be boiled, so bring food, a tent and gear for cold and wet weather. Park rangers meet visitors and give tours.
Safety. The State Department has Canada at Level 1, exercise normal precautions, its lowest level, with no areas singled out (feed dated 11 June 2025, read 5 October 2026). The hazards here are the place’s own: polar and grizzly bears, cold water, fog that can strand a visitor, and the slumping ground at the edges of the island. Inuvik, with its regional hospital, is the nearest help, a flight away.
Mark this place
Common questions
Where is Herschel Island?
Herschel Island, Qikiqtaruk in Inuvialuktun, is in the Beaufort Sea about five kilometres off the north coast of the Yukon, Canada, and about 250 kilometres from Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. It covers 116 square kilometres and is the Yukon’s only large offshore island.
What does Qikiqtaruk mean?
Sources differ slightly. Wikipedia’s article on Herschel Island glosses the Inuvialuktun name Qikiqtaruk as “island”; the Government of Yukon and Wikipedia’s article on the territorial park give “our island”. The park’s official name is Herschel Island–Qikiqtaruk Territorial Park.
Who was Herschel Island named after?
John Franklin named Herschel Island on 15 July 1826, writing that he wished to honour the name Herschel. Christopher Burn, in the journal Arctic in 2009, found it unclear whether Franklin meant the astronomer William Herschel, his sister Caroline or his son John.
Why did whalers winter at Herschel Island?
To hunt bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea, where commercial whaling began in 1889, ships had to winter in the Arctic, and Herschel Island’s Pauline Cove gave them a harbour. Wikipedia estimates about 1,500 people there in 1893–94; Parks Canada’s commemoration gives 2,000 whalers and Inuit in the winter of 1894–95.
Does anyone live on Herschel Island?
Not all year. The last year-round residents of Herschel Island, the MacKenzie family, left in 1987, Wikipedia records. The Inuvialuit still use the island for hunting, fishing and camping, and park rangers are on the island through the summer visiting season.
How do you get to Herschel Island?
By chartered plane or boat from Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories, between mid-June and mid-September, according to the Government of Yukon; aircraft need a park permit to land on Herschel Island. Expedition cruise ships also anchor offshore and land passengers by small boat.
Why is Herschel Island eroding?
Herschel Island has no bedrock: it is sediment and ground ice pushed up by a lobe of the Laurentide ice sheet, and as its ice-rich permafrost thaws, the coast and slopes give way. A 2008 study by Lantuit and Pollard measured coastal erosion of up to three metres a year in places; the Guardian reported the tundra sheared away in more than 700 places over two weeks in summer 2024.
Is Herschel Island a World Heritage Site?
Not yet. Herschel Island (Qikiqtaruk) has been on Canada’s World Heritage Tentative List since 1 October 2004, together with Ivvavik and Vuntut national parks on the Yukon mainland, as a mixed natural and cultural site. Canada designated the island a National Historic Event in 1972.